Your workday needs some knitting

Think back to your last aha! moment. Where were you? What were you doing? Chances are, you were alone doing something you habitually do, like taking a shower, brushing your teeth or washing dishes, and thinking about nothing in particular. You probably weren't in a room surrounded by people with your hand poised on a whiteboard trying hard to coax an idea that, like a cat summoned to a bathtub, stubbornly refused to respond to your call to creativity.

Open plan offices are designed based on the theory that putting people together leads to a continuous state of collaboration and an endless production line of new ideas. But constant group work can limit idea diversity because individuals aren't given sufficient opportunity to do independent exploration for novel solutions. What if we intentionally use what we know about mind wandering and creativity to produce the conditions that encourage individuals to let ideas bubble to the surface of consciousness? It would require a rethink of the open plan office and what we imagine valuable work looks like.

This is what we imagine valuable work looks like.

Hands on keyboard, world tuned out, this is work that looks busy. The dude could be checking the status of his Amazon shipment of espresso pods, but man, he is the stock image of busy.

This is what we imagine slacking off looks like.

But is this really slacking? (btw, every office should have a cow.)

According to research cited in Chris Bailey's Hyperfocus, engaging in a simple enjoyable task that doesn't require much attention and capturing ideas as they naturally rise to the surface of consciousness is by far the most powerful way to tap into your creativity. Bailey knits, not only to connect ideas but to rest his attention, recharge and presumably build a large collection of mittens. Spanx CEO Sara Blakely purposely makes her morning drive to work longer, driving around aimlessly for an hour on a "fake commute" because the drive gives her time for her thoughts to come to her. The name Spanx came to Blakely as she sat in traffic on one of her fake commutes.

Consciously switching between periods of intense, productive, deep work--hyperfocus--and relaxed periods of solitary mind wandering that Bailey calls scatterfocus is the best of all work worlds, but takes a brave company to change the perception of what the ideal workday looks like. Imagine a workplace that supports employees as they set up distraction-free work sprints of 90 minutes with a "small win" in their highest priority work at the finish line--say a draft report, a presentation, or a deep dive into something worth learning. After each sprint, employees are rewarded with 15 to 20 minutes to freely engage in fun non-work activities as knitting, playing simple games, or going for a walk and encouraged to be on the lookout for any aha! thoughts that may spontaneously appear.

We know based on the work of Harvard's Teresa Amabile that making progress, no matter how small, in meaningful work makes people feel good about themselves, their co-workers and their company, and gives them a sense of intrinsic motivation that is the wellspring of creativity. Sometimes progress comes in the flash of an aha! moment. The rhythmic alternating flow of work and rejuvenation, collaboration and solitude, create the ideal conditions for innovation and meaningful progress. We have created the conditions for a daily marathon of busy work that is exhausting and ultimately unproductive. Isn't it time we tried knitting?

About the Author: Her scatterfocus activity is walking.

"All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

She's still waiting for a truly great thought, but has had many creative, useful and life-enriching thoughts on her daily walkabouts.

Get Fully Charged on Knitting Ideas Together

I highly recommend avid knitter Chris Bailey's Hyperfocus and his unorthodox approach to hyperfocused reading that involves tearing out the first page and using it as a bookmark, then taking a pen and/or highlighter to mark up the book as much as possible.

He may not be a knitter, but no one makes a better case for the value of deep undistracted work than Cal Newport, author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.

And no one makes a better case than Tony Schwartz for how human beings are intended to work, not at high speeds continuously for long periods of time, but in pulses of spending and renewing energy that are equally valued. Tony gave this TED talk in back 2012 and it's just as relevant today.

You can listen to Spanx CEO Sara Blakely in conversation with Reid Hoffman on this Masters of Scale podcast entitled, How to Find Your Big Idea that includes flashbacks to previous guests who share their favourite thinking rituals. Sadly, nobody knits, but there are a lot of walkers, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Medium CEO Ev Williams and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

In this Washington Post article, you'll discover the Facebook of knitting called Ravelry.com and how knitters make the jump from hobbyist to entrepreneur. MIT PhD candidate Hyejun Kim analyzed over 400,000 Ravelry profiles and conducted 100 interviews to discover that it was offline encouragement that enabled talented knitters to believe in themselves enough to turn fun into profit.

Where do you get your best ideas? Is there a habitual activity you enjoy that you can use to intentionally trigger scatterfocus during your workday? The best suggestion gets a copy of The 5-Minute Recharge: 31 Strategies to Refresh, Reset and Become the Boss of Your Day